Christmas 2010!

On Christmas Eve we went to a party with the Thomas', then met my family at the cemetery to do the annual lighting of the candles, then we came home and the kids opened their new Christmas P.J.'s and 'surprise' new pillows. Then they settled into bed to wait for Santa to come.

Justus got new wireless headphones (his favorite gift) and some new clothes.

Tori got a Zune that made her very happy until it quit working that day. She's been a little hard to live with ever since. We returned it and hopefully a new one will arrive in the mail soon! She also got new clothes and a much needed coat.

Adri was surprised with not ONE but TWO guinea pigs! She's a pretty happy little girl. These guinea pigs are brothers, we learned from santa's note, and she named the black one J.J. and the white one Gizmo. They've been a lot of fun to watch and play with.

Jake and I were groggy eyed most of Christmas day since the kids couldn't wait any longer than 5:00 a.m. to wake us up. We went to my mom's to eat Christmas Brunch with the Sorensen's and have our Christmas party. It was a fun filled weekend! We're still trying to get back to normal.

Adri, Gizmo and J.J.

Big On Christmas

Happy Christmas Eve!  I hope you're all ready for the big day tomorrow.  I've been really into the snowman theme this year and this card worked right into it.  I used the Perfect Polka Dot embossing folder to add some dimension and love how it turned out.  Have a Merry Christmas!

Adri and Jasper playing in the snow

We had a big snowstorm yesterday and the day before.  The kids even got a snow day out of it.  I got stuck trying to get them to school, even with 4-wheel drive.  Luckily my brother Kevin came with the big loader and cleared the road in front of our house (THANKS Kevin!).  The snow plows always miss it.  Adri and Jasper have had so much fun playing in the huge pile of snow he made.  

Adri built this awesome snow guy!  Gotta love it!  His mouth is part of my bucket she broke building him (urrrggg!), he has wood chip eyes, dead flower buttons, a berry nose and of course brooms for arms and a way cool flag just for fun!

Delightful Decorations

This is a quick card I put together for my Primary lesson tomorrow.  I made one for each of the kids.  On the inside they will draw a picture of a service they can do for someone and then give it as a gift.  The colors are Riding Hood Red and Garden Green.  

Big on Christmas

This was a fun card to make with all of the tiny little brads used as Christmas lights.  Awwwwe, cute!  I also added a little glitter to the tree.  The colors are Riding Hood Red and Garden Green.  I used the Aqua Painter to fill in the letters and tree.  The wheel is Christmas Chatter.

Annual Gingerbread House Making!

Tori really gets into making her gingerbread house.  She always seems to take the longest, but her house always looks very precise and beautiful.  Adri made sure that Grandma Sorensen didn't forget about the event.  The minute she was home from visiting cousins in Ohio Adri got right on her about getting it scheduled.  Grandma didn't fail us!  She built 17 houses for all the grandkids and one for herself!  Justus is boycotting cold weather and refused to do a typical gingerbread house.....  see more below!

Here's Adri working on her gingerbread house.  This is very toned down for her.  Usually she's trying to put as much candy on as possible so she can snack on it later.  She did however insist on blue icing.  It came in handy for Justus' too.

This is Justus hard at work on his beach house.  Ha, ha!  The kid cracks me up! 

We do know how to build a mess!  This is Grandma, Wendy (working on baby Allie's gingerbread house, Adri and Codi.  See that tummy hiding behind the chair?  Codi is due in 2 days and insists that baby boy will come exactly on time.  We hope she's right!  We can't wait to meet him!

Tori, Mallory, Josie and Gracie are working hard.  Tate is being crazy! ;)

Tori and her beautiful house!  Great job Tori!!!  She has to have everything just so, right down to the pattern of cookies on her roof and perfectly aligned fence.

This is pretty much what happens to Adri's gingerbread house.  It goes within days!  Wonderful work Adri!!!  Maybe just a bit messy though!

And here we have Justus' master piece complete with ocean, thatched roof, surf board and palm tree!  Way to get creative Justus'!

All he wants for Christmas is a real good tan!  

If you look close you can see the 'sparkling' trees that give the illusion of fresh snow!  As much as I hate the cold and snow it is fun to look out the windows of your warm and cozy house and see the trees and roof tops covered in snow.  First I embossed the trees from Lovely as a Tree (one of Stampin' Up!'s oldest sets) with white embossing powder.  After it cooled I dotted the ground and tree tops with a two-way glue pen and added Dazzling Diamonds glitter.  The colors are Pear Pizazz and Poppy Parade from the In Color Line.  The pattern paper is one of the hostess gifts from the catalog.

Season of Joy

I love this Christmas stamp set!  The colors I used are Cherry Cobbler and Old Olive.  I had to do some cutting out for this card, but I LOVE how it turned out!  I could have colored the star, tree and tree trunk with markers, but opted to stamp them separately and then cut them out and pop them up with dimensionals.

Delightful Decorations

This is my card trade from Stamp Club a couple of weeks ago.  I'm just a little slow posting it.  But it's another fun idea to do with the fan-folded paper.  I also stamped one of the ornaments from the Delightful Decorations set, punched it out, cut off the tip of the ornament and you have a cute flower pot!  The Perfect Polka Dots Embossing Folder worked out great with all of the other dots.

Justus' Eagle Project

Justus was lucky to get his Eagle Project planned before the bad weather started.  His project was cleaning up Sandy Beach and Swede's lane by Utah Lake.  He had a great turn out from friends, family and ward members.  It was cold, but luckily the rain held off.  Justus made these invitations up and took them to church and to his friends at school.

Everyone met up at the church.  This is Caiden, Colton (aka Smitty), Justus and Wes.

Wes, Tyler, Smitty, Jasper (our dog), Justus, Corbin (aka Lefty) and Jake.

Me and my mom.

Wes, Caiden, Adri, Justus, Tori, Kelsie and Smitty.

Tori, Kelsie (Tori's friends who I begged to come and help us) and Grandma Bonnie.

Olivia and Justus' Aunt Abby.

This is us getting started at Sandy Beach.

Zeke, Garrison (cousins) and Adri.

Tori, Kelsie, Grandma Marilyn and Grandma Bonnie.

Kelsie and Tori by the STOP POACHING sign.

Lefty, Justus and Smitty hauling a heavy tire.  You can't believe the junk that people left there.  There were even dirty diapers!!!  Quite a few!  It was SO GROSS!

Wes, Smitty, Lefty and Zeke

Sean brought his big truck and we were happy to have it to help haul stuff home.

Sean, Caiden, Jake and Matt.

Zach and Zeke.

Caiden and Tanner.

This is when they found an interesting dead thing.

Zach, Hayes and Grandma Bonnie filling up their bags.

Hayes, Kelsie, Tori, Grandma Bonnie and Tyler.

Me, Kelsie, Grandma Marilyn and Tori.

The whole crew walking back to the trucks with the last of our trash.

This is Justus' Grandpa Mike.  He took most of these pictures which we were VERY grateful for. Justus' mom got busy picking up trash and only took a few pictures.  He and Grandma Bonnie also brought hot chocolate and donuts and served everybody from the back of their truck.  By then everyone was cold and hungry, so the hot chocolate and donuts were great!

Trevor (one of Justus' YM leaders) was great to bring his HUGE trailer and bobcat to help us out with the big stuff.  There was absolutely no way we could have done it without him! 

Trevor's big trailer after we filled it up.

This is his trailer when he went to unload it at the garbage dump.  WOW!  Justus picked a project that really made a big difference.  The land owner came down as we were working and he was very grateful for all of the hard work and he said he had never seen girls help out at an eagle project.  Go girls!

Jake even filled up his trailer!

Great job on your Eagle Project Justus' - we're so proud of your hard work and a BIG THANKS so everyone who took time out of their day to come and help!!!  We ended up with 24 helpers!